The Quarry as Sculpture: The Place of Making

Abstract

Practices of sculpture and geography have collaborated ever since Stone Age humans hoisted up rocks to point them into the air. The ephemerality of life was rendered in a circle of forms and mass that celebrated the union of sky, earth and dwelling. Through the manipulation of stone, the land became a place, it became a home, it became situated and navigable. As millennia unfolded, the land was written with the story of itself. The creativity woven into the story of place is an evolution of material viii I would like to express a special gratitude to my close friend Rose Ferraby, someone with whom I have been able to share a deep respect for stone and quarrying during our time as PhD researchers. I thank Rose for the many chats over the phone, for her humour, creativity, rigour and energy. I would also like to acknowledge the friendship, support and spirit of collaboration provided by Jane Bailey, Natalia Eernstman, Alyson Hallett and Andy Whall, during our shared experiences of carrying out PhDs.

Eye‐opener: Drawing landscape near and far

“…Beyond questions of landscape and drawing specifically, this paper also looks to address, and to situate itself within, the rapidly growing body of geographical work now exploring collaborative forms of practice with artists, and using different types of creative approaches, techniques and genres. The definition, status and potential of creative geographies has been widely discussed in recent years (see for example, Banfield, ; de Leeuw & Hawkins, ; Eshun & Madge, ; Hawkins, ; Miller, ; Williams, ) in tandem with the consolidation of art–geography collaboration as a key research venue, technique and outcome across human geographies (as a sample, see Davies & Scalway, ; DeSilvey & Ryan, ; Foster & Lorimer, ; Gibbs, ; Merriman & Webster, ; Paton, ). In these contexts, two initial issues for this paper are: first, the precise nature of the collaboration undertaken here and second, the implications of an untrained geographer seeking not just to practice visual art techniques, but to use them as occasions for conceptual writing and reflection.…”

Taxidermy workshops: differently figuring the working of bodies and bodies at work in the past

“…While geographers are demonstrating increasing interest in the geographies – cultural, political and economic – of craftwork, they have been largely rooting their craft concerns in the present (though see Gibson ). So far those engaged in researching ‘craft geographies’ or ‘making cultures’ either seek to underline the social, economic and political potentials of artisanal practices and workplaces for responding to post‐capitalist relations (for review see Carr and Gibson ), or are engaged in in‐depth ethnographic studies of the practised, embodied and more‐than‐human dimensions of craft‐skills worked through the body in contemporary workshops (O'Connor ; Patchett ; Paton ). Moreover, while McMorran (, 490) promotes ‘working participant observation’ as a way of researching the complex embodied interactions taking shape in the workplace, historical geographers hit on a problem when attempting to access past bodily work practices and places: much of the everyday embodied past is unspoken and unwritten and therefore goes unrecorded.…”

‘The Head Carver’: Art Extraordinary and the small spaces of asylum

“…Figure 1 ) carved by Adam during his 50 years of incarceration at the Royal Asylum of Montrose are important starting points for recreating Adam’s asylum experience, hinting beyond the asylum walls and into a range of spaces elsewhere that were significant to him. They suggest complex connections between time and space, as Paton (2013 : 1077) highlights in relation to the laboured action of a stone–metal–flesh dialogue which fuses relations between past and present. Each of the stone heads represents flows between (geological) time and human relations with place, an intricate relationship between the body and the material ( Paton, 2013 : 1072).…”